Older child adoption

No, we are NOT adopting again. But based on our experiences there are huge differences between adopting a younger child and an older child. For me the bonding process has been much more difficult. With Sabrina it was very natural. Even though she was 17 months old, she felt even younger. We were the ones that taught her to walk and talk. Almost from day one she has felt no different than our biological children. Even though I am not a huge physical touch person I think it was so valuable to carry her, snuggle her, tuck her in bed, etc.

Having missed the gradual bonding process with Teme, I am still at a loss. Having been the main caretaker for Noelle and being pulled in so many directions our survival mode has been, Scott takes care of Teme and I take care of Noelle. We have managed to maintain shared parenting of Sabrina.

So here I am. Trying to live with and parent a child that sometimes feels like a stranger. HELP! I know that some adoptive parents read my blog. If you have suggestions please let me know. The counselor I am seeing does specialize in adoption issues so I am hoping this will help in time as well.

The other women

The hardest part of missing the trip to Ethiopia was missing meeting the other women in my children's lives.  Though I had met Sabrina's grandma, I had not spent much time with her.  Scott said she is a spitfire and that Sabrina's personality is more like hers than her birth mom's.  He said she looks the most like her aunt Mona.  I did not get to meet her.  Scott has met her twice.  We did not realize that we would be able to meet Sabrina's birth mom.  Apparently Sabrina's family called her mom and said she should call Scott.  Near the end of their trip she did and they were able to meet her.

Sabrina's mom, Ada.  Apparently you pronounce it like S'ada.

This is Teme's mom.  

Scott was able to meet her on his previous trip to 

pick up Teme.  So she has now met Scott, Jake and Sabrina.

I have not yet met her.  I wonder what she 

thinks of Teme's American mom that cannot seem to make

it to meet her. 

Interrupted Plans

May 30th we drove to Minneapolis and boarded a plane to Washington, D.C.  During all our planning we know our biggest obstacle was Noelle.  Struggling with migraines, anxiety and a general lack of desire to travel made her travel very iffy.  Before the plane left the gate we had to rearrange so that I could sit by Noelle to comfort her.  She sobbed all the way to D.C.  In all my planning I truly thought our biggest struggle would be her migraines.  I never imagined the heights her anxiety would soar to.  After arriving in D.C. we had a planned overnight.  Noelle was able to sleep fine, probably aided by the medicines we tried on the plane.  The next morning we made it all the way to the gate...But she just could not board that plane.  So Noelle and I spent a week driving back to Iowa from D.C.  We tried to make it fun.  Meanwhile the rest of the family is experiencing momentous things in Ethiopia.  Here are a couple of pictures that they have sent.

This is Sabrina and her nanny from KVI.

If you notice the pictures in back they are from the

day Sabrina came to the orphanage at 9 months

weighing 8 pounds and then shortly before we

travelled to pick her up, at 17 months.

Sabrina was the first baby at the Nazaret KVI.

This is Sabrina and her grandmother.

Scott said she is a spitfire so now we

know where Sabrina gets it!

Apparently, they had the extensions put

in in Addis Abba.  Sabrina has longed for
long hair so I am sure that she is thoroughly
enjoying her new hair.

Teme and his siblings.  I am unsure if the baby is his niece
or his little sister.  Lots of babies have joined the families
since we last visited.  Sabrina has a brother and Teme
has a new sister and a niece.

What I didn't expect...

...to be constantly moving from sunup until sundown.
...another big time physical touch kid!
...sibling stuff. Pestering the younger sister, annoying the older sister.
..."Mama, I love you so much!"
...an 11 year old boy with a shoe and clothes fetish, especially shoes!
...God's anointing in so many ways!
...full time school within two months of arrival in the US. (at a school representing 13 languages with a great ELL program and a fantastic male 4th grade teacher!!)
...lots and lots and lots and lots of ketchup (on everything, even waffles...YUK!)
...more laundry, makes sense but I just didn't think about it. And he likes things clean, even his shoes.
...that Scott and I would make new friends as a result of Teme coming.


I know there are so many more so I may have to update sometime. Adoption is a crazy thing. And crazy times a million when it is an older child! We have two post placement reports coming up. The end of this month, Sabrina will be home 2 years and Teme will be home 3 months! WOW!

Third big event in one week!

Sunday, the 22nd, was our 23rd anniversary. It is was also the day that Scott left for Ethiopia to pick up Temesgen Jonathan Larson. I took him to the Cedar Rapids airport for an early flight. He then flew to Chicago and on to D.C. He had a long layover in D.C. then finally left for Ethiopia around 7pm. I heard from him today and he is with Temesgen! They are doing great! He said that Temesgen is happy and skinny:) After their embassy appointment tomorrow they will go on a trip to visit Nazret, Sodo and Hosannah. Sabrina was from Nazret so we have been there. Temesgen is from Hosannah. I am so excited for him to see so much of our children's birth country! My guys will return on Sunday the 29th!

Embassy Date!!

We have an embassy date!! August 25th! We haven't purchased tickets yet but that is the week we will be travelling. It will just be Sabrina, Scott and I as Jake starts school at Iowa State University and Noelle starts her freshman year at West High School. Please pray for all the details to fall together. Please pray for Noelle's first two days of school to be fantastic so that she is not so nervous about us leaving!! I'll add more prayer requests later. Thanks for your prayers, they mean so much!

Temesgen is our son!!

I am so excited that I am blogging before I call Scott. Oops! Temesgen passed court today and is officially, according to Ethiopian courts anyway, our son. Isn't he handsome!

Court date!

Wow, we have a court date. Well one of three anyway. Our agency called and they said they got three court dates and were not sure which one was ours:) But on May 17, 18 or 20th our son will appear in court and we will know if he is to be a part of our family! If he passes court we will be travelling to pick him up in the next few months. So exciting! So many changes!

Adoption update.

Not too much to report. But for those of you in the "adoption-know" you will realize what this all means! Our dossier is in Ethiopia! So we are waiting for our official referral and our court date. It has been implied that our court date will most likely be this summer. The biggest change is that we will need to travel to Ethiopia twice to complete our adoption. We will need to travel for the court date and the embassy date. For Sabrina's adoption we were not required to travel for the court date. So we need to get the kid's passports updated so that they have the option of traveling with us. Now that I am finally blogging again I will try and update more often. We appreciate your prayers. Adopting an older child is fairly intimidating!

Lessons I'm learning

Some days the lessons our Lord has to teach us are so hard. Lessons about loving and being joyful. Lessons about patience. Those are the lessons I am learning.

Patience is a long battle for me but with adoption it takes on a different significance. Things are moving very slowly with the pursuit of our second adoption. We have sent our application and updated our home study. The agency however would like to gain a better understanding of our son's situation before we proceed. The adoption laws in Ethiopia have been changed since we adopted Sabrina. Probably these changes were needed but they will most likely slow things down. So pray along with us that these issues are resolved quickly and that T doesn't have to wait any longer!

The lessons on joy and loving are harder. They reach into me and make me squirm. I don't feel unhappy, but certain people in my life say I come across that way. That saddens me so much. I want the joy that Christ offers me to be so obvious! And the impatience that plagues me causes me to come across as unloving. Yuck! So these are the things I will be pursuing...JOY, LOVE and PATIENCE. If you have any great places to start in the Word, let me know.

Four kids?!?

God is calling us again. Loud and clear. Some of you know that when we called about Sabrina, we also inquired about a little boy. Almost two years later, he has still not found a home. We are pretty sure that is because we are his family and we need to go get him!! So, we are starting the process again. I am unsure if the journey will be longer or shorter based on some of the details of his situation. We had our home study appointment Wednesday night and are working on the first round of paperwork.

We would love your prayers that this process would go quickly. In my little dream world, I see us all going to pick him up next summer before Jake heads off for college. By the way, have any of you returned to Ethiopia with your previously adopted children? Scott is worried about taking Sabrina.

Words

I like words. I love scrabble, crossword puzzles and most other word games (hello, pogo). But words can slice through you. I still find it hard to believe that something that a complete stranger took about 10 seconds to say is still churning around inside me. I am such a nerd that I even looked up some words this morning. Like race. Is that really based on color? Not necessarily. "A group of persons related by common descent, blood or heredity." Does that mean that it bothers these ignorant people when people marry people of any other heritage? Just processing here. I thought that I had processed my feeling on this as we considered adopting. It is just not the same as when you are faced with this discrimination, prejudice, ignorance..... I also looked up the n word. Prior to the definition it says, "offensive and disparaging". Yah think!!! Mostly I looked it up to see if by definition it referred to African-Americans or all dark skinned peoples. It is the latter.

That's another question I have about words. Is my daughter an African-American? I know she will be perceived as such. I know by birth she is Ethiopian. She is being raised in America, by Americans. Ethiopia is in Africa. So doesn't that make her African-American?

One more weird thing. When I told my 17 year old what happened, he was like "so?". I think as in "duh, mom, she is". Apparently he didn't feel this was a "offensive and disparaging" comment. Apparently he hears it often at his high school. Is this his ignorance about the feelings attached to the word? Or has it generationally become less offensive? Sometime I would like to have a more in depth conversation with him. Not sure if that will ever happen:)

Never ready

I had my first incident with racial ignorance tonight. I am still in shock. It happened as we were leaving Barnes and Noble. Noelle, her friend, Sabrina and I. A man walked by us and made quick rude remarks and called my daughter the n word. By the time I processed what was said, I only saw the back of his shirt. I convinced myself that anyone that ignorant was not worth chasing down to explain the situation (adoption). As I sit with the incident I realize that I would have felt better if I had defended my daughter, even if he was still an idiot. I also realize that explaining that our situation was adoption might make it sound like I believe that there is something wrong with biracial relationships (I hope that is the right terminology). What makes a person who they are is not their skin color. As Noelle and I talked about the incident, it was interesting process it with her. I hope that I always form my opinions about people on things that are important: their relationship with God, their character, the way they treat other, etc.

My stomach still hurts. Any advice on how to handle this when it happens again? I know that it will. Our little town, at one point, was a hotbed of racial disturbances.

That was fast!

Wow! I feel so famous. We are on the front page of our local paper. I actually haven't seen it yet, I have only read the article on line. And now you can too, www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2009/02/16/news/local/11022042.txt . There's only one thing that made into the article that's a little scary. That's the part about us possibly adopting again. I hadn't actually discussed that with Scott yet. Oops!

Fame, no fortune

Guess what? Our family, along with our good friends the Gerdes', was interviewed to be in our local paper. They are covering the story of Sabrina and Anna's adoptions. Please pray that the article would be honoring to God and that it might encourage someone in the adoption process. We would love to inspire someone in their adoption journey! God used two adoption stories that ran in the paper to encourage me during our journey. I will be sure and update when I find out when the article will run.

Leaving on a jet plane

Decked out for our first car seat ride
Scott's cousin, Amy, greeted us at the Chicago airport.

Chillin' in the airplane

It tastes best when I feed myself.

It felt like a bad case of planes, trains (shuttles) and automobiles. 17 hours Addis to DC, 2 hours DC to Chicago, and four and a half hours from there to Waterloo. We were unable to sit together on the long flight. But Scott had to sit next to some kids that were having a much tougher adjustment than Sabrina. Noelle was wonderful help on the flight and the entire week. Sabrina has just been fabulous.

We are all very tired today. It is Monday evening. We have been home about three days. It is not yet 8:00 and Noelle and Sabrina are out for the night. Hopefully, I will be joining them soon. I still can't believe that our journey to bring her home is over. I am looking forward to each step in our journey as a family!

Emotions run strong!

Nutella, yummy!

Traffic was horrible, and this multi car accident on the way to Nazret was scary.

Sabrina's nanny at KVI


The livestock in the road, both in Addis and Nazret made me laugh.

Thursday we made the trip to Nazret. Nazret is where Sabrina was in KVI orphanage for about eight months. We were able to bring donations and hand out goody bags to the kids. The kids were at school when we got there and then came in for lunch. Christy had a sponsor child in Nazret that we were able to visit. Though it was very difficult, we were pleased to be able to meet Sabrina's birth mom. I am so happy to be able to tell her a more detailed story some day. The drive back to Addis Ababa was full of many thoughts.

Once back, we had to pack and leave for the airport. The guest house had a coffee ceremony that night, but we were kind of in and out preparing to leave.

Days 2 and 3, in Ethiopia

Day 2: Was relatively calm. We gave Sabrina her first bath, which she screamed all the way through. However, her cry is very soft like one of a newborn so it wasn't too bad. We had our visit to the US embassy. We had a couple of small scares. One when they had trouble locating a document and then when they said, "her visa will be ready Friday morning". We said but we fly out Thursday night. They were able to accommodate us, so no problems there.

Day 3: Was very full. In the morning Christy, Noelle and I went shopping with Aduna and two other ladies from the guest house. As were unable to take the babies out and about. Scott stayed with Sabrina and Christy's son. It was hard to try and find all of the souveniers that we wanted in just a couple of hours, but we tried to do our best speed shopping. After we returned, we were able to deliver supplies to the Ahope orphanage. It was so fun to hang out with the kids and play soccer and they seemed to really enjoy the goody bags that we brought them. Later, we had a going away party at the Thomas Center. The kids sang to us and we celebrated with snacks. We were able to hand out goody bags to the kids there as well. We were given the gift of a traditional Ethiopian outfit for each member of our family. We were especially touched that they remembered Jake, who did not travel with us.

It was a little frustrating because we were not allowed to take photos of the kids who were waiting for the families. Knowing how much those photos mean, and having said we would take them was a bummer. After the party we were taken to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant with great food and traditional dancers. We were all very tired. Noelle slept through dinner, but it was lots of fun. Especially watching the white middle-aged tourists try to dance.

The other guests at the guest house kept asking what agency we were with. CHI did a wonderful job of escorting us throughout the week. They were great about trying to meet any requests that we had.

Journey to Sabrina

WOW. That about sums it up, but I am sure you want to hear and see more. So, I will try and start at the beginning. We left Saturday to drive to Chicago, about four and a half hours. The miracles started with check in. Thanks, Diane for the many tips. We went straight to over sized luggage check-in. We had eight trunks for three people. The agent set the first trunk on the scale 53+ pounds, supposed to be 50 or under. He says we are going to pretend that I am not a mathematician and doesn't weigh any more trunks. He tried to waive the fee for our extra luggage but was unable to do it. We felt that $360 was a fairly low price to pay for the privilege of carrying all of these supplies.

Our flight was delayed in Chicago, but we still had plenty of time in Washington, D.C. Good thing, because the line to get onto Ethiopian Air was nuts. I was very glad that I had downsized our carry-ons, as they were definitely weighing the carry-ons. We were able to meet up with Christy King, also with CHI, in the line. We had such a great week together.

In Ethiopia, one of our bags was missing. But just as we got to the front of the line to report it, I took one more look around and found it. We had customs officials save us from the line and OK our entry without opening a trunk. As we were leaving someone stopped Scott but did not make us open our trunks. We witnessed others with their donations strewn about. We were greeted by Abdissa, his wife, and Aduna (our driver for the week) from CHI.

We loved the Ethiopian Guest House. All of the guests were in the process of picking their children up for adoption. There were our family, Christy, a couple from WI, and two other families. The adapter I brought was the wrong one, and when I downsized my luggage I ended up with no pajamas and a shared bathroom. There were great shared spaces, a yard, good food and wonderful staff.

Monday morning Aduna picked us up to go to the Thomas Center to meet our children. Noelle was the first one to see Sabrina; before the van even stopped. It is hard to describe the emotions. In some ways they were less intense than I thought they would be. Everything felt so right, like she has always been apart of us. Sabrina was able to come back to the guest house with us. So we spent the day getting to know one another.

Surreal

I cannot believe that in less than one hour we begin a journey that really began in April of 2007. People ask me how long the process has taken. In my mind that it is when it started; when we decided to adopt.

Without taking into account time changes (it's only 4:50 am), in approximately 24 hours we will be in Africa. In approximately 48 hours we will meet Sabrina. Though in my heart, I know and love her so much!

There is a car seat in my husband's car for the first time in probably 9 years. I can't remember when they actually get out of them. I should have taken a picture, it is so cute. It is pink and brown with flowers, funky not cutsie. (You can find it on http://www.target.com/. The cheaper one not the one that costs $200+!) Noelle even got over the fact that it was pink. We were out in the dark last night trying to figure out how to install it. What's with the cool new latch system? Pretty sure my car doesn't have that. Oh, well. Also in our car are eight trunks full of supplies. Imagine this...we are traveling to Ethiopia with one carry on bag weighing less than fifteen pounds (each). Funny, in one way we are really travelling light but on the other hand...!

Specific prayer requests:
1. Baggage check. That they would be kind. We will be charged for our two extra bags. I don't know if there is any flexibility in that amount. We heard $180 per bag. I tried to weigh the bags, I got 45-51 pounds each. Pray that I was fairly accurate and that if the bags are slightly over 50 pounds that they would pass through any way, without extra charges.

2. Noelle's passport expires in January and has a horribly light photo. Pray that we do not get any hassles.

3. Pray for our first meeting with Sabrina. We hope to bring her back to the guest house with us but that is pretty scary, too. Check out where we are staying at http://www.ethiopiaguesthome.com/.

4. Pray for our schedule. It is very hard for me not to know ahead of time what we are doing each day. Pray that arrangements can be made for us to visit the two orphanages that we have brought all of the supplies for. Pray for us to be able to make it to a market to buy souvenirs. We are unable to take Sabrina with us to the market, due to new "rules" in country.

Well, my alarm just went off, so I suppose I better stop typing and start getting ready to leave. Thank you all for being such an important part of our journey!